Primary Immune Response Provides Protective Efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection

Rupendra Shrestha 1Reena Shrestha 2Ram Bahadur Khadka 3Rabin Gyawali 4

  1. Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, United States.
  2. College of Medical Science and Teaching Hospital, Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal.
  3. Department of Medical Laboratory Technology, Crimson College of Technology, Butwal, Nepal.
  4. Department of Basic Sciences, Nepal Sanjivani Institute of Health Science, Dang, Nepal.

Type: View Point  DOI: 10.31729/jnma.5538

Abstract– While there is absolutely no evidence to ensure recovered patients are either likely or unlikely to get reinfected. But studies in non-human primates indicate that reinfection of recovered patients is highly unlikely. It is also clear that primary immune responses or induced immunity to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 remain in circulation for several months and at least temporarily confer immunity to protect from reinfection. In addition, negative virus culture analysis of re-positive suggests that positive reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reactions in recovered patients are more likely to be false-positive, or detection of genetic remnants of virus discharged from lesions of lungs or better sampling at the time of repeat analysis. However, emerging severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 variants are likely to be causing the infections observed in some of the recovered patients.